Distraction – Our Greatest ThreatBy Shlomo Maital It is easy to identify a lot of things that have gone wrong in the world. Britain is in a deadly stalemate, facing an urgent decision and with no majority for anything. Right wing governments threaten democracy in Venezuela, Poland, Hungary and even Italy. America is stuck in a stupid conflict between a stubborn President and stubborn Democrats. Israel goes to elections on April 9 that according to polls will change absolutely nothing. But underlying all this is a little-noted problem. Distraction. Small children are easy to distract; parents do it all the time. Apparently world leaders are also easy to distract.Trump obsesses over a wall, while America’s economy slows, and its infrastructure crumble. Israel faces threats on its borders, but its Prime Minister obsesses about his impending indictment for bribery. Europe struggles with migrants, and debt, but is totally distracted by Brexit and will be for months.China and the US grapple over Huawei and cell phone technology, while their trade war causes the entire world economy to slow. The world has lost focus. The 30-second news cycle has led to massive myopia, neglecting longer term problems. Elections focus on personalities. Try to find a comprehensive well-designed political platform for any political party anywhere. I think the distraction of non-news and personalities is a major threat – if it continues, we will never even begin to grapple with the real major problems the world faces. So, let’s decide – Just because our leaders are distracted, and purposely try to distract all of us with pipsqueak inconsequential matters, we don’t have to play. Where possible, let’s find ways to refocus the political system on the things that really matter – saving, education, investment, schools, roads, corruption, equality, and overall creating a better world. Make America Make the World GreatAgain.

The press are moaning about Britain’s “hung” parliament, because Teresa May did not get a majority, leaving Brexit negotiations with the EU in limbo.

I see a different, much bigger problem. This, I believe, is the first election in which a generational war between the millennials and their parents has broken out.

According to Bloomberg, the Boomers voted for the Conservatives, and before that, for Brexit. The millennials, first, registered to vote in very very large numbers (which they did NOT do for the Brexit referendum), and then, voted massively in support of 68 year old Jeremy Corbyn. Their support for Corbyn was exuberant and high-energy. Many of the young people voted for the first time.

“Brexit, along with spending cuts and paying for pensions, pitted the generations against each other. Young once apathetic Britons rallied behind Corbyn’s leftist battle cry and propelled the anti-May anthem “Liar, Liar” to the top of the pop charts with 2.6 million YouTube views. “I wanted to see Theresa May get a bit of a kicking,” said George Hames, 20, who voted for Labour in London. “The way Corbyn has been able to paint a contrast between himself and May: He’s given people something to vote for, not just pragmatically, but because they think it can change the world.”

Why is this a big problem? In normal times, the older generation, which has wealth and power, acts to create a better world for the younger generation. So both generations have a common interest.

Today? In many countries, young people no longer believe at all that this is the case.

Civilized society is based on trust, on faith, on values, and on an orderly transition in which power and wealth are handed from one generation to another.

In societies where this is not the case — young people may leave (in droves), or create social unrest and hung parliaments, as in Britain.

Brexit is a problem. But finding common ground between old and young is a far more pressing problem, and a far tougher one. Brexit means bargaining with the EU, an external force. Millenial wars mean finding internal agreement between young and old – and that is far harder.

I wish Britain well. Other countries may soon experience similar Millenial wars. France, in contrast, may have cracked the problem by electing a 39-year-old inexpericnced President. So far it seems to be working.

A psychologist named Michael Kosinski developed a method to analyze people in minute detail, based on their Facebook activity. The technique is known in general as psychometrics: Measuring psychological characteristics from available data.

The company behind Trump’s online campaign (a key part of his win) was Cambridge Analytica, a Big Data company, which also worked on the LeaveEU campaign for the pro-Brexit group. Cambridge Analytica apparently used Kosinski’s findings…

How does it work? Cambridge Analytica “buys personal data from a range of sources”… aggregates it with the electoral rolls of the Republican party, and calculates a Big Five personality profile… digital footprints “suddenly become real people with fears, needs, interests and residential addresses.” Motherboard was told: “We (Cambridge Analytica) have profiled the personality of every adult in the U.S. – 220 million people!”.

An example: Design an ad based on gun rights. An image on the left: an intruder smashing a window. On the right: a man and a child standing in a field, at sunset, both holding guns, clearly shooting ducks. Tradition, habits, security, family.

“Pretty much every message that Trump put out was data-driven”. E.g., on the day of the 3rd presidential debate (the one Trump did well at), Trump’s team tested 175,000 different ad variations for his arguments, to find the right versions above all, via Facebook. They found what resonated most. “We can address villages or apartment blocks in a targeted way. Even individuals”.

One goal was to “suppress” Hillary voters. How? Keep left winters, blacks, etc. away from the polls, by (in Miami’s Little Haiti) stressing how the Clinton Foundation failed in its efforts to help, after the Haiti earthquake. These dark posts “can only be seen by users with specific profiles…”.

Amazing that Trump, who lacks even a computer on his desk, was elected by some very very advanced Big Data methods. Thank Steve Bannon, who is not to be underestimated…ever!

OK, so counting four years from Jan. 20, or possibly eight – how do we survive?

Mark Blyth, a political science professor at Brown University, has some sage advice, published in the Washington Post.

The basic problem: In democracy, we vote for what we want. And increasingly, Blyth notes, we are simply NOT getting it.

“Unsurprisingly, people are beginning to realize that they are no longer getting what they vote for. Instead, they are being asked to pay more and more for what they already receive through taxes, taken from stagnant or declining incomes, which also must service their debts. In such a world it’s great to be a creditor and lousy to be a debtor. The problem for democracy is that most people are debtors. In such a creditor-friendly world, however, democracy is reduced knowing that the menu of policy will never vary. Trump’s win in the Midwest, British voters deciding to leave the European Union, Italy’s referendum and Greece’s revolt against its creditors are all connected in this way.”

In short: Most of us owe money. A few OWN money. The system has been rigged in their favor. And it may stay that way under Trump, the billionaire.

So how do we respond? Blyth observes:

“At the end of the day, when you no longer get what you vote for and when the role of voting is reduced to affirming the status quo, voters will vote for the most undemocratic of options if that is all that is “off the menu.” That’s democracy in action in a world devoid of choice. When you can’t get what you want and most people do not benefit from the economic outcomes of government, it’s also what makes democracy unstable.”

Americans voted “off the menu” (a minority of them, true) because that was the only choice ‘off the menu’. And it has made democracy unstable, and is doing so all over the Western democracies.

We’ll survive this. Take a deep breath. Take a long view. Watch how the brilliant, wise American Constitution protects its citizens from scoundrels. At some point, centrist politicians will begin to understand that voters want real change, want to unrig the system to help debtors not creditors, and want actions, not promises. It may take a few more ringing defeats, like Trump, Brexit, and Italy to wake these politicians up.

For four years, or eight years, Americans must say clearly what they want, and vote that ticket in every election. Mid-term elections are only two years away. How will Trump supporters vote, when they feel they are again, not getting what they want?

Journalist Aditya Chakrabortty has been covering the “post industrial” depressed areas of Britain for The Guardian. These are the people who once had good jobs in factories and mines, who have been forgotten and neglected by governments in Britain, the rest of Europe and the U.S. They became invisible.

Now, after Trump and Brexit, perhaps we are waking up. Perhaps we are beginning to see them. Here are parts of Chakrabortty’s vivid description of a once-wealthy Wales town. If Brexit and Trump act to truncate globalization, it will be because we forgot those who lost because of it, and celebrated only those who gained. Post industrial? “Post” implies something came after ‘industrial’. But what? Poverty? Hardship?

“The story of Pontypool is a story of riches squandered, of dynamism blocked, of an entire community slung on the slagheap. Sat atop vast deposits of iron ore and coal, it was probably the first industrial town in Wales. For a time, under Victoria, it was richer than Cardiff. Even now, to look along its skyline is to see traces of wealth: the park with its Italian gardens and bandstand; the covered market with its olde price list for snipes or a brace of pheasants; the 25 listed buildings that make this one of the most sumptuous small town centres in Britain.

“Then look down. On a typical weekday, the indoor market is a desert. Those bits of the high street that aren’t to let are betting parlours, vaping dens and charity shops: the standard parade for hollowed-out towns across Britain. The reason isn’t hard to fathom: the mines shut down decades back; the factories have pretty much disappeared. Those big employers still left aren’t big employers any more. One of the staff at BAE tells me that when he joined in 1982, it had 2,500 workers on its shopfloor; now, he reckons, it has 120.

“Swaths of Pontypool and the surrounding region of Torfaen now rank among the poorest in all Britain. On part of one of its housing estates in Trevethin, 75% of all children under four are raised in poverty. Over half – 53% – of all households who live on that stretch are below the poverty line. With that come all the usual problems: families that can’t pay the rent, that are more likely to fall prey to a whole range of sicknesses, from mental health to cancer. Those people can expect to die 20 years before their near-neighbours in some of the better-off areas in Pontypool. First the economy died out, now its people are too.

“Pontypool is like the rest of south Wales, like many other parts of Britain I have reported from. It’s what politicians and economists call “post-industrial”. That term, though, implies something coming after; here, hardly anything has come after. A few years ago Pontypool town centre was declared on the verge of death by a local councillor, who bore a coffin lid in a mock funeral procession.”